Hologram
by CandyPants
Summary: Boys will be boys, and they'll always teeter-totter over the fence between loathing and adoration. AU. AkuRoku and Xion being lovely. Roxas-centric.
1. Bones

I post a song at the beginning of each chapter. By the end of the story, we're gonna have a great playlist to poetically drown ourselves in the ocean to.

Summary: Boys that want to escape, boys that think they're older than Methuselah, boys that are convinced they hate the South, girls that are probably more mature than the boys put together and seem strangely okay with it all, and a triangle of youth who may or may not come to realize that they don't, in fact, know it all. On top of everything, they might not ever come to a unanimous agreement on whether crystal meth is _really_ worth the money or not.

Warnings: Sheer insensitivity, terrible attitudes, even worse decision making, drug use, chain smoking, binge drinking, potential mentioning of bodily fluids and phallic appendages, and pure, unadulterated angst and misery.

_Lorde- Ribs_

Roxas had a habit of chewing his translucently thin fingernails down to the quick. In fact, this was what he was doing while he was sitting on an isolated park bench in the middle of a vaguely familiar state park he might have visited once on an elementary school field trip. He couldn't quite remember. His pale blue eyes narrowed in slight pain as he felt a tell-tale tear at the junction of skin and keratin, and he pulled his index finger out of his mouth to discover bright pink, saliva slicked nail bed. He wiped the spit diluted blood on his pants leg. His mother would be screeching about that if he didn't have the sense or memory to hide it while in her presence. That is, assuming he would _need_ sense or memory today, if he would be in his mother's presence at all, if he decided to go back home and cancel the plans he had conjured up for the day, for potentially the rest of his life. If all went accordingly, and he intensely wished it would, he would be leaving his pathetic, boring, excruciatingly _dull_ adolescent life behind. The thought caused him to shiver, or maybe that was the wind. He was bundled up on that frigidly cold December day, in layers of brand new semi-designer clothing his parents rather informally gave him on Christmas morning two days prior.

He would be turning eighteen years old on February seventeenth. The thought usually excited kids his age, the thought of being able to buy cigarettes, lottery tickets, click the "yes, I am eighteen" button on websites truthfully, to gain the ability to vote, to be seen as an "adult" in the eyes of Uncle Sam and the United States government. Roxas simply saw it as another year gone, another year wasted.

Saying goodbye to his house and his bed was as easy as was expected, and his silent goodbyes to his parents were disturbingly painless. The only thing that held any semblance of challenge was saying goodbye to his friends, though they were nearly as dull and austere as his progenitors. Only nearly, though. He could admit that, a few times in their obedient lives, they had attempted to taste rebellion of some sort.

_Attempted_.

He took a deep, shaky breath of cold winter air. He felt as if frost was swirling around and within his bronchial tubes, turning any moisture within his lungs into microscopic shards of ice, and he could see his breath as he exhaled again, half expecting to see snow slip past his lips. He rose from his park bench, and began to walk at a gingerly pace. There was a labyrinth of dirt trails in this massive park, many of them leading to different places. There was the path that would take you back to the lodge where you could look at uninspiring pamphlets about endangered species of butterflies and the invasion of kudzu and drink from communal water fountains that dispensed untrustworthy, dirt-flavored water. You could head down to the swamp, but god knows why anyone would want to spend time staring at that stinking, festering cesspool. Some people fancied the nature trail through a damp, lifeless, unvaried southeastern forest. Roxas could only take so many pine trees before he died of boredom. He had taken the trail that led toward the river, though he had to admit that calling it a river was slightly hard-pressed. It was more of an oversized creek flowing with greenish, glass-like water over sludge covered rocks, swimming with microbial creatures and potential organ-melting parasites. Roxas idly wondered if the questionable water fountains back in the lodge were somehow associated with this radioactive looking waterway.

His gingerly pace could have been correlated with a suppressed sense of _doubt_ that Roxas had been pushing away with pep talks and a potentially false sense of courage and fearlessness. Truth be told, Roxas had never done anything quite like this before. He'd barely ever had the chance to breathe a word of this even to himself under the watchful eyes and oppressive thumbs of his mother and father.

By fate or luck, Roxas' inner turmoil and the germination of seeds of doubt were interrupted by the sudden realization that he had made it back to the highway. The road was quiet, which would have been prospectively discouraging in light of his current situation. He had read somewhere that smiling, even if you are unprovoked, will lighten your mood and make you feel better, in the sense of manually altering your psyche. Essentially, contorting your face into a counterfeit expression of any emotion can trick your brain into making you actually feel the emotion your pie-hole might be imitating. With that thought in mind, he quickly put on his "determined" face, shifted the heavy backpack he carried to briefly relieve his shoulders of weight and tension, and began walking down the side of the road, his head and thumb both held high.

He walked like that for several miles, away from his home town of Lake City, South Carolina. He was beginning to feel those freshly planted seeds of doubt begin to grow in his mind again. He was getting cold, despite the amount of bundling up he had done before he had left his house that morning. It had to have been around one or two in the afternoon now. A few cars had passed him by, barely bothering to slow down. Roxas wondered if people looked at him and slowed down due to some errant thought that he would try to jump in front of their cars to injure or off himself, and they needed to slow it down to make sure they could stop in time to thwart his attempted suicide. Hitchhiking wasn't the most _thrilling_ experience thus far, once he got past the initial, short-lived anticipation and adrenaline rush, but it wasn't horrid enough to give up to _that_ extent.

As if on cue, he heard another car far down the way ahead of him. He could just barely see the car headed towards him. Soon he was able to make out the color, which was black, and eventually he was able to make out the make and model, which was an older Jeep Cherokee. As his heart pounded with the same kind of trepidation you feel on the first day of high school that makes you feel as if your breakfast of pop-tarts and chocolate milk would soon be spewed all over campus, he rose his hand and lifted his thumb a little bit higher.

The utility vehicle began to slow down, and Roxas half expected the driver to gently pump brakes, glance at him indifferently, and move along as if there were nothing to see. He was actually surprised when the Jeep slowed down and actually came to a complete halt in the middle of the abandoned highway. The black paint was old, dingy, and covered with brown dust, and the side mirror on the driver's side was missing. The windows had been tinted with half-assed effort, most likely by the driver's cousin or uncle in a makeshift car garage. Though the job was shitty, it was nonetheless effective, and Roxas couldn't actually see the kindhearted driver who had so graciously stopped for him.

Nothing happened for an uncomfortably long moment, and Roxas was unsure of what he was supposed to do in this event. Was there etiquette involved with hitchhiking? Was there an unwritten rule book somewhere that Roxas didn't know about? Before his thoughts could get too convoluted, a window was rolled down and Roxas' eyes were introduced to the most genuine curiosity and amusement he had ever seen etched onto a human face. A human face that was also painfully striking and handsome to look at, like the fashion models you see amongst the pages of Vogue that sometimes make you literally sick to your stomach and full of self-loathing. His looks were alienesque in the hick-town, sprawling dead tobacco field setting they were in, and his eyes were a toxic green that Roxas could easily see and become befuddled by from across the road.

"Is this the part where I ask you if you want free candy?"

He half-shouted the words over the engine of the car and amount of distance between them. His voice slipped lasciviously from his bemused smirk in an oddly good-natured way. Roxas would remember this later, when he would realize that his first impression of the man was that he was obviously an avid user of a kind of amiable derision.

"Isn't this what they warned me about as a child? Stranger danger and all that?"

"Yeah, and now I think this is the part where I assure you with a typical claim that I don't _have_ to be a stranger for much longer."

Roxas almost laughed a little, but out of suspicion and the lack of wanting to come off as the giggling school girl type, he stayed deadpanned.

"Fuck, you know I'm joking, right?"

Without missing a beat, Roxas retorted. "What if you're not? What if you've got some ploy turning over in your mind right now that involves shaving my legs and raping me?"

"Would you gain any sort of reassurance if I promised to use lube?"

"Not really."

"Good. Then get in, sport."

Memories from within his high school reading list materialized in his mind, and he imagined some elaborate story from the past to explain why the guy just used the moniker "sport". Maybe the man was simply really in to Fitzgerald novels.

With a shrug to push away all semblance of fucks that he should have been giving, he walked across the gray road and opened the passenger door of the Jeep. His nose was greeted with a mixture of cigarettes, body oder, patchouli oil, cheap car fresheners and old fast food bags. There was no music playing from within the dark, warm vehicle. As he climbed into the seat, he took a brief moment to attempt an inconspicuous glance at his deliverer. He wore stained, fucked up denim on his lower half and what looked like a brand new black wife beater on his upper half. The kind of brand new black that almost looked blue right out of the plastic Fruit of the Loom package. His eyes which had shocked him from a distance before were now like the flashes of a professional camera that blinded him. He imagined that if you stared at them too long and looked away, you would see phantom spots in your vision, a ghost of the toxic green that had burned your retinas before. His hair, which he was somehow just _now_ noticing, looked a picture of shockingly red late eighties punk. He felt like he could smell the product mingling with grime to give it the shape it was in, sticking out in long, messy skewers behind his head like that.

"What's your name?" The savior asked once Roxas had shut the groaning car door. The inside was _very_ dark, save for a dim blue glow emanating from the GPS attached to the dashboard.

"Roxas," he replied plainly.

"No last name?"

Roxas took a moment to weigh out whether this stranger should know such information. He saw the digital green clock on the Jeep's console click to 2:14 PM.

"Wade," he responded, still staring at the clock.

"Roxas Wade," the man articulated back to him. His voice held a promise of being very well and able to purr and roll with seductive lilts that Roxas had only heard in high quality downloaded porn.

"What's yours?" Roxas asked politely.

"Axel Payne," he said, tucking a cigarette between his lips and lighting it on cue as if this were a movie scene. He held the soft pack out to Roxas, the cancer sticks like an offering of friendship. Roxas hesitantly took one of the Newports and hoped he could choke the whole thing down without coughing or getting sick. He wasn't much of a smoker; in fact, this would be the third cigarette he had ever had in his life.

* * *

"Want a smoke?"

The first cigarette was fairly memorable and Roxas could look back on it almost fondly. He was fifteen and almost every ounce of his spare time was spent goofing off inside of cars driven by slightly older teenagers that still thought it was cool to call cigarettes "cigs". Today they were in the Sonic Drive-In. Last weekend they were in the Wal-Mart parking lot, and the weekend before that they were behind the do-it-yourself car wash. The slightly older teenagers that his mother would refer to as troublemakers and delinquents were seniors this year, and most of them had this hideously annoying habit of bringing up the fact every time something vaguely nostalgic happened. His mother was surprisingly off the mark about them; these kids actually didn't do much worse than smoke cigarettes, consume copious amounts of caffeine and call each other "cunts".

"Sure, thanks," Roxas responded politely, taking one from the pack of Camel Menthols that was thrust in front of him almost demandingly. He was thankful that no one had handed him a lighter, considering he wasn't entirely sure if he knew how to make one function properly. He still had a lingering idea planted in his brain by his parents that lighters were the number one causes of fire related destruction and had the potential to fuck up everything he loved. Because of that, he had never really had the gonads or any real reason to use one. As a lit match was jammed in front of his face, he placed the filter between his lips and attempted to puff on the cigarette solely by the force of his lungs. He felt his eyebrows scrunch in effort and confusion.

"Suck on it like a straw," the girl holding the match said through giggles. Her face was pale and plain with an underlying air of vanity behind her sloppy eyeliner, Jack Skellington earrings and lackluster blond hair.

Roxas did as he was told and felt smoke fill his mouth. The process clicked suddenly, and he inhaled what smoke he had gathered into his orifice and immediately gagged and coughed.

Sardonic laughter rang like bells throughout the small circle of friends as if they hadn't choked on their first cigarette.

"You'll get used to it," the girl said as she discarded the match out of the window of the car and into a puddle of water, slapping him on the back. Roxas wasn't sure if he wanted to get used to it. It tasted like shit and felt like fiberglass scratching the delicate pink interior of his esophagus with a million microscopic cuts.

"Hey Roxas!"

A red pickup truck that had seen better days had pulled up next to the SUV he was currently sitting in. His best friend Hayner was practically hanging out the window of said truck, reaching out towards him with his fist in a request for daps, which Roxas accepted with a smile.

"Man what are you doing at Sonic? This place blows _dicks_," Hayner taunted playfully. Hayner was a year older than Roxas, and got the beat up truck for his birthday a few months ago.

"Good question..." Roxas responded. Why was he with these seniors again? They were pretentious and boring and not nearly as fun as his best friend.

"Get in loser, we're going shopping," Hayner laughed, reaching beside him to the passenger door to push it open.

Roxas looked back at the group of teens in the car with him. They were looking at him with disdainful sneers that screamed "we're judging you". Roxas shrugged and got out of the car, happy to hop into the cab of Hayner's truck and drive away from those other shit heads.

His second cigarette was infinitely more exciting, the kind of moment that you imagine playing out in slow motion with a generically rebellious punk song playing in the background.

"Want a cig?"

Roxas always wanted to cringe, scoff, and roll his eyes all at once when he heard that stupid word. He wasn't sure why he hated it so much, but it always felt like a word you wold say when you were _trying_ too hard.

"I guess," Roxas said in a monotone that would make Ben Stein sound like Sir Ian McKellen.

He took the cigarette and tucked it between his lips. He looked around to make sure no one was around; they were, after all, behind the cafeteria at Lake City High.

"Dude, don't be so paranoid."

There were two "friends" that were with him, one of them a tall, brown haired guy he didn't know all that well, and the other was the blond girl with the slaphappy eyeliner. She wasn't so bad. Just stupid and painfully uninteresting.

Roxas cut his eyes at the senior boy that had chastised him and slowly spun around to face the expanse of grass behind the building, zippo in hand.

The flame fluttered in the slight breeze and the tobacco crackled gently as he sucked on the filter, and the moment he raised his eyes to look back across the field, his eyes widened in surprise and pure, unadulterated fear.

"Oh fuck," the blond girl said.

Roxas dropped the lighter to the ground and booked it around the building, cigarette still tucked between his lips, praying to god that he would lose the assistant principle that had just caught them smoking and skipping class all at once. He felt as if he were running incredibly slow, the same sensation you get while trying to run during a really shitty nightmare. Your legs feel like useless Play-Dough appendages and you can't seem to _go_ fast enough to get away from the monster chasing you.

He wasn't sure where his friends were at that point, and he didn't really care. He ran and ran through the commons area, then through the double doors of building C, turned the corner, and careened with squeaking sneakers into the chest of the head principle.

Roxas bounced off of the solid male form and hit the tile floor with a sick sound between a thud and a crack.

"What the hell do you think you are doing, boy?" The man's voice rumbled with anger and authority.

Roxas laid there on the floor, defeated and spread eagle, and responded to the ceiling.

"I was smoking and running at the same time and ran into you. Obviously you know about that last part."

"Smoking? Smoking what?" His dark, beady eyes narrowed.

"A cigarette, Mr. Bullard."

Roxas suddenly realized that said cigarette had disappeared. He eyelids drooped as he imagined himself swallowing the damn thing whole on impact with the brick wall of a human he had just collided with. He imagined the red hot cherry burning a trail down his esophagus, the thing dropping into his stomach acid and festering there until he died of some horrid new form of cancer that riddled his entire body with tumors and pain.

Mr. Bullard took a few steps towards a row of lockers against the wall, bent to the ground, and picked up a miraculously still-lit cigarette. Roxas was surprised. He was genuinely convinced that he had swallowed it.

"Get _up_, Mr. Wade."

Roxas sighed and pushed himself into a sitting position, shaking his head back and forth in an attempt to reset his equilibrium, and stood to face his undertaker.

"You realize you're getting a serious amount of detention for this." The cigarette, which Roxas glared at accusingly, continued to burn between his fat sausage fingers.

"Yeah I'd pretty much accepted that as soon as I crashed into you."

"You don't seem to care much, son."

"Since we're all being honest here, I really don't. No offense."

Mr. Bullard shook his head solemnly and walked to the double doors. He opened one of them and threw the cigarette into a puddle beside the trashcan.

"You know Mr. Wade, I've been head principle at this school for ten years now," he started as he turned and walked down the hallway, Roxas assuming he was meant to follow, "and I've only known three students who were anything near as hardheaded and smart-mouthed as you."

"That so?"

"Yes, Mr. Wade, that is so." Roxas could tell he was getting frustrated. He smirked in satisfaction. Frustrating his authority figures was the only ammunition he had at the time to attempt war with them. Their anger and biting tones were fuel for his mockery. Honestly, he was sixteen at the time and overflowing with the kind of angst that could make anarchists look like preschoolers at snack-time.

"Your mother's gonna be getting a phone call about this later."

"Oh _Christ_..."

The third cigarette he had inside of Axel's dark car made him feel as if the act could become habitual and imbedded in his bones in the form of carelessly developing lung cancer. The way he felt in that moment was something almost fanciful, and it was a feeling he couldn't quite comprehend just yet. He almost smiled again, but thought better of it. In light of his circumstances, he didn't have much of a reason to be happy, at least to the untrained and uninformed eye. He didn't want his courteous host to question his mental stability so early in the game.

"Where ya headed?" Axel asked him after a few moments of driving. Roxas noticed the direction he was going and suddenly thought about the paradoxical and very not funny possibility that Axel was headed towards his home town.

"Anywhere but Lake City," Roxas responded quickly.

"Well, I can tell ya that's not where I'm headed."

"How far are you willing to take me?"

Axel pondered the question for a moment, his lips pursing in a way that resembled the freak counterpart of a Maybelline commercial.

"I'm headed to the beach, if you're looking to go that far."

"The beach?" Roxas' chest tightened and he forced his breath to come slow, the same way he might have three years ago, before he had any semblance of social competence and was winked at for the first time by a person approximating something attractive. This enigmatic man, his proverbial golden ticket, was suddenly illuminated with a heavenly light before Roxas' eyes with the sound of angels singing dulcet tones in the background.

"Yeah. I'm looking to move there semi-permanently, if I can find any place with carpet not stained with frat boy spooge."

"So you're not going for the foam parties, fifteen year old slut bags and reggae music?"

"The fifteen year olds may have also been a secondary excuse, yes."

Roxas went silent again, wondering if he was joking about this, too. Multiple jokes about pedophilia weren't exactly standard within the first few minutes of meeting a person.

"I'm kidding again. Do you always take a moment to contemplate taking every joke literally?"

Roxas remained silent just long enough for Axel to drum his fingers once against the steering wheel.

"I don't know you," he settled with mumbling, managing to tear his eyes away from Axel.

"You're right. I guess that is an adequate reason to question me. You are the kid who decided to hitchhike alone, though." Axel chuckled. "How _vintage_. Pretty risky business, hopping into total strangers cars... You can't be more than fourteen, fifteen _tops_."

"I'm seventeen", Roxas corrected him with a defensive bite.

"I wasn't too far off the mark."

"Maybe in your own _humble_ opinion."

Axel smirked and cut his eyes towards the blond boy. Something just short of a laugh escaped his throat before he took an obscenely attractive drag off of his cigarette.

"How old are you, anyway?" Roxas asked.

"I turned twenty-two last month, on the nineteenth." Smoke curled and billowed out of his nostrils like a dragon as he spoke. Roxas noticed that no one had bothered to roll any windows down, causing a light haze to be cast over them. "Just graduated early a couple of weeks ago. Feel lucky you ain't headed for the college route, kid."

"So you're a scorpio," Roxas near-murmured.

"Junior Astrologist?"

"Not really. I just know about signs."

"Then tell me about mine, and I can tell you if you're full of shit." He flashed a grin and waited.

"You're volatile, brash, aggressive and passionate. You say a lot of shit you don't mean, and you may or may not know that your words are your greatest weapon and tool. They can build or destroy whoever you choose to direct them at. You're extremely sexual and have a hard time keeping it in your pants. You rarely think before you act, and that can either spell a good time or a quick trip to the hospital, or jail. The things you believe in, you believe in deeply enough to fight and kill for. The few people you love should feel lucky, because no one will ever love them as deeply as you do. You also have a penchant for hypocrisy."

Axel whistled. "So I'm a violently passionate, hypocritical slut-bag. Impressive. But that barely begins to paint a picture of my inner complexities and machinations."

"Is your indulgent vocabulary supposed to impress me?"

"No, it's supposed to make me feel intelligent and superior to the other silly humans roaming the earth."

"Is that a lack of confidence I sense?"

"Potentially, but I don't think a seventeen year old possesses the credentials to formulate such a claim."

"I might have a lot more depth than most seventeen year olds."

"Yeah, and _most_ seventeen year olds would say that."

"You're not even that much older than me." Roxas was beginning to feel incredulous.

"Most seventeen year olds would also say _that_, for they lack the knowledge of just how much can happen in five years."

"Four years, one month, and twenty days, actually."

"Your birthday is in february?"

"Yep."

"So you're an aquarius?"

"I thought astrology was bullshit?"

"I never actually said that," Axel said, a wink following close behind. The kind of gut-wrenching wink that could cause puppies to spontaneously combust into ash and blackened organs while simultaneously causing unicorns to achieve orgasm.

Roxas took a final drag from his cigarette and mushed what was left into the overflowing ashtray under the digital clock. He remained silent and decided to give up on the debate, wondering if it was normal or not to have such rapid-fire confabulation with a stranger in the first place all the while pondering if the carpet matched the drapes.

He turned his head and looked out of the window. Dead tobacco shifted to dead cotton, and that was about the greatest extent of stimulation one could get whilst driving down the flat, depressing highway in Bum Fuck Egypt, South Carolina in the dead of winter.

When his mouth wasn't talking, it was usually working a number on his nails, especially when he was nervous. He had received something of a shock when he _really_ noticed how the trees and various crops and livestock were rushing by him from within the dark and overwhelmingly unfamiliar vehicle. Mile after nonrefundable mile flew by from within that stranger's car, and it was only until that moment that he felt something powerful- something that he didn't want to admit felt a lot like fear. He looked down at his hands, fingers tense and unmoving. He only had one nail left to chew, and that was the thumb nail of his left hand.


	2. Lungs

Hi hi hi, don't mind me, casually begging for **reviews**, thank

_Miniature Tigers- Bullfighter Jacket_

"That's a disgusting habit, you know," Axel commented almost casually, making Roxas wonder if his mild concern was obligatory or sincere.

"I know. Can't help it," he responded from between his teeth and thumb nail.

"Why chew your nails? Why not chew gum or smoke cigarettes or crack or something?"

"Smoking crack is probably the worst alternative you could have suggested."

"It's better than chewing your nails. That's fucking gross."

"Your hair looks like it smells gross, but you don't see me complaining."

"We only just met, you know. Save the catty criticism for when we're _really_ close. It'll cut deeper."

Roxas rolled his eyes, but internally started a little at the mentioning of being _really_ close to the guy. How long would he be traveling with this stranger? He knew his palms were sweaty and cold now, and he wondered how long he could keep his impending anxiety attack at bay. Every word from Axel's mouth only perpetuated the reality that he was running away from home, completely alone. The concept, the idea, the sudden _actuality_ gave him the sickening feeling of having something dense and metal crash down on him. The seeds of doubt had full-on sprouted now, and he was beginning to question his decisions.

"You okay, kid?" Axel asked.

"I'm fine," Roxas snapped. "And don't call me 'kid'. 'Sport' is better than 'kid'."

"You're attitude is mildly hostile in the most bizarre way I've ever seen. Getting cold feet?"

Roxas couldn't decide if Axel was the annoyingly perceptive type or if his apprehension was that obvious. Since it had clicked, it had begun to grow fast and with a vengeance. His fingers were trembling in his mouth and his brow had furrowed in a way that felt permanent. He wasn't the most adept at controlling anxiety.

"I'm fine." He repeated. He stared out the window again, watching those trees moving by, taunting him in a way that seemed infuriatingly casual, as if they had hands and faces and were waving at him with dumb, oblivious smiles. He had the awful sensation of being out of control of all of this, like it wasn't _him_ who had decided to run away from home in the first place.

"Listen kid, if you're gonna wig out on me, I'd appreciate it if you did it quietly and can assure me that you're not going to tuck and roll out of my Jeep."

"I'm not gonna tuck and roll, damn, I'm not stupid."

"Well I don't know that, we only just met."

"Trust me. I wouldn't jump out of a moving vehicle."

Axel let out an abbreviated laugh and lit another cigarette.

Roxas, wanting nothing more than a distraction from those fucking trees, turned and looked at Axel.

"Wait... Didn't you just smoke a cigarette?" Roxas' big blue eyes were narrow with puzzlement.

"Yep."

"So... Why are you smoking another one?"

"I'm an incredibly unapologetic chain smoker... Say, would you be interested in picking up such a habit? It gets a little lonely, smoking by myself while people make ugly faces and pretend to cough around me. I don't know about you, but I've always thought that was stunningly _rude_."

Roxas thought about it. Maybe smoking another would calm him down? He didn't see an issue.

"Yeah, I'll have another."

Axel's eyes flashed along with a wicked grin, and he held out the soft pack to Roxas once again. Roxas took one of the cigarettes, cracked the window for ventilation, and this time he did smile, though it was faint and could nearly be described as ambiguous.

"Ah-ha! I saw that," Axel said.

"Saw what?"

"You smiled, sort of. You should do it more often. This ship does run on happy faces, you know."

"Are you being serious?" Roxas' ambiguous smile extended to a noncommittal grin.

"You betcha. I may _look_ like I just snorted a gram line of crystal meth and crawled out of a dumpster that might have contained an aborted fetus, but most parents would describe me as wholesome and delightful as their kid's breakfast cereal."

"I think... Just a shot in the dark, here... that you might be bullshitting me."

"Maybe. I guess you'll figure that out soon enough."

"Do you _try_ to be really perplexing or is it an inherent skill?"

"What do you think, _kid_?"

The smile that Roxas' face was working on had vanished, and he shot Axel the kind of 'are you shitting me' look that would make thirteen year old girls cry with jealousy. He was really good at giving those stereotypical looks-that-kill that pubescent girls shoot their mothers every chance they get. His friends called it _sassy_, embarrassingly enough.

"Would you get butthurt if I said I think you're trying too hard?"

"Not really. As much as I appreciate scathing words from little strangers, I've honestly heard that from so many people that I genuinely don't give a shit anymore."

"I'd take that as a sign if I were you," Roxas said cooly, ashing out of the window. Yeah, he could get used to smoking.

"I don't take it as a sign, because I'm willing to bet like, twenty bucks that I give too few fucks to possess the ability _try_ too hard."

Roxas scowled and took a long drag off of his cigarette. Axel was becoming increasingly obnoxious, and he was beginning to question if he could handle an extended car ride with him. How far away was the beach again? Three hours? Roxas exhaled and he felt himself deflate like a birthday balloon in defeat.

"Did I piss you off?"

Roxas sighed and responded, "Can't we just... ride in silence?"

"Do I annoy you?"

"You're getting there."

"Why?"

"You're just irritating. Like, just be quiet for a few minutes and keep your stick out of the fucking ant pile."

"Aww, I stirred up your ant pile? Tough luck, I never shut up."

"God, just drop me off on the side of the road, I'll hitch another ride."

"No can do. We're in this _together_. I was thinking of making a blood oath, actually. You know, we each cut our thumbs open with a pocket knife and press them together, sealing our fates for eternity and creating an unbreakable pact to be blood brothers until death takes us... Doesn't that sound lovely?"

Roxas cocked and eyebrow and turned to the window again, which was equally unpleasant. If he could have rolled his eyes a million times without hurting himself, he would have.

"All jokes and button pushing aside, haven't you noticed something?"

"What?"

"You're not fidgeting or mutilating your fingers anymore."

Roxas' face softened when he realized that, yes, he was no longer trembling, no longer anxious, and no longer biting his nails. He was fairly at ease, if not a little ruffled.

He shook his head and scoffed, and yet he couldn't hold back a smile. The kind with teeth showing that his mother always nagged him to execute in family photos.

"What... Axel, what the hell _are_ you?" Axel had unexpectedly cheered him up, and by unexpectedly Roxas meant that this was something that had literally never happened. _Ever_. His tone, which was quiet and somewhat muted before, had become a little more bold and unconstrained now, something close to the way he would speak with Hayner or Olette. This was quite the feat for Roxas, because he _never_ opened up and resembled anything comfortable so soon after meeting a person. He wasn't shy by any means, just socially dysfunctional and unable to really find anyone to be interesting or stimulating in any way. He's never felt an initial bond, or even a long term bond, with anyone that was exactly awe inspiring or profound enough for him to blabber with ease and without suspicion. Actually, he's never felt much of a connection with anyone _ever_. Axel, so far, had shown himself to be the exception to the rule. He made conversation easier than most people. It must have been a Scorpio thing.

"What _am_ I? I'm your bright and shining moment, baby."

"Are you fucking serious right now?"

"You'll get used to it."

Roxas wanted to ask him if, by saying 'you'll get used to it', he really thought that they were going to be sticking together through this little escapade of his, but it was one of those things that you'd rather keep to yourself for fear of either a) making yourself out to be a clingy little nancy boy or b) hearing an answer that may be a little creepy coming from a stranger so early on in the venture.

"Say, looks like we're getting close to Lake City. We'll get on Myrtle Beach Highway in about ten minutes. Or at least that's what my GPS seems to think. You know, I could have taken I-20 to I-95, but I've always liked the back roads."

Roxas grimaced and slouched low in his seat. If they were going through town, god forbid he would be visible. You know, that whole small town rule: everybody knows fucking _everybody_. If someone caught even a glimpse of him in that jeep, someone with his mother on speed-dial would have it covered in about a nanosecond, and then he would be _royally_ screwed.

Axel looked over at him and grinned knowingly. He had the sense not to comment, but to distract.

"Twenty Questions?"

"Takes too long. And someone always ends up asking about a bra size, even if no one has tits."

"True... Never Have I Ever?"

"That'll work, as long as you don't ask about my sexual encounters."

"Done some fucked up shit, have you?"

"No. My sex life is just non-existent and pointless to ask about."

"Wait," Axel said taking his eyes off the road fully to face Roxas dead on. "Don't fucking tell me." He shook his head in exaggerated disbelief.

"Don't tell you _what_?" Roxas saw the tops of some _very_ familiar antiquated brick buildings against a cold, cloudy sky and swallowed hard. He turned his entire face to look back at Axel.

"Don't tell me you're a virgin. For the love of our lord and master Satan himself..."

"Watch the road! Jesus!"

"Don't you dare avoid my inquiries!"

"I'll never get to answer if you crash and kill us!"

Axel laughed and looked back to the road. They were doing about twenty-five through the pint-sized town and were in no danger of crashing or killing anyone.

Axel sneered at the old, crusty place. He was happy he was merely passing through.

"To answer your question," Roxas started, sliding lower in his seat and crossing his arms, "yeah, I'm a virgin."

"_How_?"

"It's not really that crazy. Some people don't lose it until college."

"Really? Shit, I lost mine when I was fourteen."

"Please don't tell me it was to a babysitter, because then I _will_ tuck and roll."

"Unfortunately, it wasn't. It was my best friend. Well, my best friend at the time. We don't really talk anymore. College and all... it separates people."

"Oh," Roxas said simply. He almost asked about the girl and the event, but the conversation had bled into an area that had the potential to be touchy. No need to dig further.

"By the way, if your backpack is obstructing your leg room, you can chunk it in the backseat."

"I will in a bit. Are we almost through town?" He just _really_ needed to get through town.

"Just about. I'll tell you when we're on the main stretch."

"Okay." Roxas reinserted his thumb nail and chewed.

"Hey," Axel started, looking honestly sympathetic. "You need to chill, kid. Come on. I know leaving the nest is a big, scary deal and all, but... You know, hakuna matata, or whatever."

Roxas' brow furrowed and he wanted to respond with his famous sass, because honestly, what kind of seventeen year old boy could possibly even _attempt_ to chill in his current situation? But something stopped him from mouthing off. He actually wanted to hear Axel's opinion on why and how he should stop repeatedly shifting into panic mode.

"Let me have another cigarette and then tell me about the secrets of _chill_."

"Before I do that, I'm gonna have to know a bit more about you. Hell, all I know is your name and sign. This isn't a booty call at a gay bar. I at _least_ have to know your mom's maiden name and how your first pet died before I stick it in."

"Is this shit constant, or do you have an 'off' button?"

"It's pretty fucking constant. I worked hard on it," he said with a sly smile, handing Roxas another Newport. "I'm about to turn onto the highway. You can sit like a normal human being now."

"Thanks," Roxas said, sitting up and lighting his cigarette with a quickness. He cracked the window again and took a few moments of silence to toss his backpack into the back seat and take a few drags.

"Shall we begin the game?"

"Five or ten fingers?"

"Ten, of course."

"Any rules?"

Axel waggled his eyebrows and said, "_No_ rules. Anything goes, short stuff."

"Well... Never have I ever had sex."

"Oh come on! That's cheap as fuck!"

"You said no rules," Roxas responded musically.

"Okay, okay, let's start over. There's only one rule, and it's 'don't be an asshole or a cheap little shit'. Got it memorized?"

"Please don't tell me you came up with that little catch phrase all by yourself, because it's a little embarrassing."

"You're just jealous because you don't even _have_ a catch phrase."

"Never have I ever..." Roxas cut in and trailed off. "I have... never smoked weed."

"You're shitting me."

"No really, I never have. Not that I wouldn't, I just... I don't know, I guess I've never really had the chance while I was in the mood."

"Ahh, the stars weren't aligned properly?"

"I guess not."

"We're pulling over at that gas station up ahead. Then gimme five minutes."

"Oh... kay?"

They put the game on hold so Axel could take long, lanky strides into the gas station and emerge a few moments later bearing a brown paper bag and a thin plastic package.

"What did you get?" Roxas asked when the Jeep door slammed shut.

"Two Colt 45's and a pack of Zig-Zags. I'm about to get you high as a mother fucker."

Roxas went silent. As much as he wanted to ask 'what's it _feel_ like', he clammed up like a bivalve. If there was anything about himself that _really_ annoyed him, it was his insufferable habit of saying nothing when he feared he would accidentally say something stupid. He always wondered, during all of his little turtle shell moments, what he could have learned, what he could have contributed to, the friends he might have made, the drugs he could have done, the girls he might have fucked, the experiences he could have had, the stories he could have told, if only he had pried his stiff, rusted lips apart and defibrillated his cold, limp tongue long enough to speak and be _heard_.

Roxas mentally kicked the shit out of himself for letting it happen again, yet remained silent.

Axel looked to and fro to make sure no one seemed interested in his Jeep, and reached down into his boot to remove a small, twisted up plastic bag holding something lumpy and green.

"Oh," Roxas managed to squeak out.

"What?"

"Nothing. It just doesn't really... look..."

"It's doesn't look like the scary, monstrous life ruiner your parents told you it was? Trust me kid, this is the most casual thing you will ever do in your life, and it'll make you feel good, laugh a lot, hungry, horny, maybe a little sleepy, and it'll cure whatever cancer you may or may not have."

"_Horny_? That's not awkward at all..."

"Not like crazy, raging, uncontainable hard on you could smash buildings with, or anything. Just... if you're around the right people you'll probably be a little more down to fuck than you usually are."

"Oh. Okay."

"Now, if I was handing you some pure MDMA, on the other hand... That's that shit that wreaks havoc." Axel looked as if he were looking back on a moment that he was both overly fond of and slightly disturbed by.

"Um... What is that?"

"Oh _boy_..." Axel rolled his eyes and shook his head, a gesture that Roxas found uncomfortable to look at, for some reason. Maybe it was the sudden awareness that he actually didn't know much about drugs. It almost produced that hot flush in his ears he gets when he says something dopey and gets laughed at. His reaction embarrassed him, like Axel was on a panel of judges behind a wide table and loose leaf papers solely there to review and critique his existence, only to shatter Roxas' hopes, dismiss him with a wave of his hand, and move on to the next candidate. It was a silly thought, he told himself, but Roxas felt the cold sting of humiliation deep and subtle in his solar plexus all the same. It was that horrid gut feeling that he tried to avoid with his signature bivalve behavior. Roxas could have knocked his own teeth down his throat.

Axel started breaking weed on a cd case and rolling a joint then. All of the manner of smells that were in the Jeep before were replaced with the exotic aroma of grape flavoring and dank bud. Roxas thought that the smell was almost earthy, like a mixture of pine, citrus, and soil. It was a very nice smell.

"I'll tell ya one thing, sport," Axel said from between the teeth that the joint stuck out from, "if you don't gain anything from adventuring with me, you'll at least gain knowledge and potentially first hand experience about the finer, less healthy, but immensely enjoyable things in life."

With a flick of his lighter and a little twitch at the corner of his mouth, he lit up, puffed, and inhaled deep.

As he exhaled, the action was broken up by repressed coughs, the solid cloud of smoke whooshing out of his lips in a stop-and-go fashion. His body gently lurched with each of the forced halts, his eyes watering lightly, eyebrows raised, a good natured expression on his face.

"Wow," _cough_, "that's a kick," _cough_, "in the fucking throat!" _Cough_.

Roxas eyed the scene in front of him. He wasn't _entirely_ sure how he felt about getting kicked in the throat, but Axel seemed to be happy with the effect, and he involuntarily curled his toes in excitement. He was ready to try something new. This was what this whole quest was for to begin with, wasn't it?

"I stopped by a friend's house in Camden on the way," _cough_, "and bought an eighth from him," _cough_. "It's really good medical grade stuff."

He extended the joint to Roxas then, which he took with a little nervous twinge of his stomach.

"Here goes nothin'," he said with a vague smile and a shrug.

"Pull with your lungs, don't suck on it like a cigarette."

It was easier than expected. The heavy, earthy smoke had a bitter, spicy, yet pleasant taste. He licked his lips and tasted the sweetness of the paper. As he exhaled his own thick cloud of smoke, his throat and lungs began to burn like fucking hellfire, and he broke into a fit of coughs resembling a tuberculosis patient in 1912.

His eyes watered with the exertion of his coughing attack. He tried to repress them like Axel did, but with no such luck. I guess it was a skill that came with practice.

"No, don't hold back the coughs," Axel said, a very self satisfied expression smeared across his face. "Coughing makes you like, fifty times higher."

"Then why," _wheeze_, "don't you cough?"

"Because it's annoying."

"You're being a hypocrite."

"Does being a Scorpio count as an excuse?"

Their voices were strained with smoke, and the cab of the Jeep was hazier than ever. Axel put the Jeep into reverse and pulled out of the gas station and began to drive away, taking the joint back from Roxas.

Axel took another two tokes, Roxas took one more, Axel took another, and then a slow sensation crept up on him. His eyelids felt puffy, and he was having a hard time keeping them open. A smile spread across his face, the corners of his mouth practically touching his earlobes, and he had the strangest, most distinct feeling that his head had turned into a balloon. He thought about the old AirHead candy commercials from the 90's and started _giggling_.

"Fuck, don't tell me you're a giggler," Axel said as he cracked open the window to throw the roach out and ventilate the car a bit.

Axel's voice sounded very far away. Roxas turned his head to look at him, _very_ slowly, not able to move at a normal speed, and continued to laugh.

"Am I high? Like, this is what this is?"

"Yeah, this is what this is."

"This isn't even that crazy. I just feel..."

"Chill?" Axel suggested. His eyes were puffy, too.

"Yeah!" Roxas' facial muscles were beginning to cramp from smiling so hard.

"See? And that, my friend, is the secret of _chill_."

"Wow. That came full circle in an unexpected way. It's like a movie." He felt like he could have babbled endlessly. He didn't even care how unlike him that feeling was.

"Or just me answering your questions."

"Or that."

"You know what's exponentially better when you're high?"

"What's that?"

"Pink Floyd."

With that, Axel tethered his iPod to his car's sound system and shared with Roxas glories of The Wall. It was loud and nearly overwhelming, to the point that Roxas could feel a tightness in his throat, a side effect of a wave of emotion that might have had potential to cause tears. He was able to insert himself fully into the sound, and there was something very profound and big about the feeling; he had never experienced any substance that actually enhanced his senses, after all.

"This is fucking beautiful!" He proclaimed this at the top of his lungs, tilting a scrunched up face to the ceiling of the Jeep.

"I told you!"

"Hayner really loved this album," Roxas said with a small, quiet smile.

* * *

"If you don't like Pink Floyd, I don't like you."

That was one of the first things the two blond boys ever argued about since they had broken the casual-friend-at-school boundary and ventured into the-asshole-that-raids-your-fridge area. Roxas was fourteen, Hayner had just turned fifteen. It was summer, the first summer they ever hung out together. They were bored, and Hayner was confused about Roxas' taste in music.

"I didn't say I don't like them, they're just not my cup of tea, I guess."

"Oh what, not _grunge_ enough for you? You're the only person I know who still actually listens to Nirvana. What the fuck is this, 1992?" Neither of them noticed the hypocrisy in that retort.

"I have an old soul, I guess," Roxas said, picking at a broken button on his green flannel shirt. In all actuality, it wasn't even flannel. It was a cotton shirt with a plaid print. Roxas didn't know any better yet.

"Oh fuck you, you don't have an old soul, you're just an angsty fourteen year old."

"Shut up dude, I'm no less angsty than you are!"

"I'm chill as fuck, don't get it twisted."

"I'm not 'getting it twisted'. Who even says that?"

"Me, faggot."

Roxas rolled his eyes and rolled over onto his stomach. He was currently lying in his bed while Hayner sat in the computer chair, spinning in lazy circles.

"I'm just saying," Hayner continued, "You can't top The Wall. Hands down, best album ever written."

"You're full of shit. Have you even _listened_ to The White Album?"

"The Beatles? Seriously? You're the biggest closet hipster I've ever met."

"I'm not a hipster!"

"That's what they _all_ say."

Neither of them knew how immature and unrefined their music taste actually was. If you had told them, at the tender ages of fourteen and fifteen, that Pink Floyd, Nirvana, and The Beatles were all _technically_ considered pop music, they would have gone up in arms and argued all day that they were absolutely _not_ pop. They were _so_ not mainstream. They were original and edgy and _no one_ listened to them. Like, _ever_.

"I'm so bored!" Roxas moaned into his pillow after a long pause.

"Wanna walk and get some ice cream and hang out at the spot? Meet Pence and Olette?"

"I guess so."

It was all they had to do, really, but Roxas probably couldn't think of anything more fun at the time. It was all he really knew. This was the first group of friends he ever had that he habitually hung out with, after all. He was social enough, but only marginally. He wouldn't call himself a butterfly.

They left Roxas' typical suburban southern house and got their ice cream, Hayner pushing Roxas into a trash can on the way, causing him to flail dramatically in his descent to the pavement, and dump all of the trash into the street. Hayner howled and ran away, leaving Roxas with skinned palms and red ears.

"Hey, I got a winner!" Olette said an hour later after finishing her own sea salt ice cream bar. She was lounging on her favorite couch in their little secret hang out spot, which they were _very_ proud of. She waved her popsicle stick in the air triumphantly, the faint letters on the stick vaguely visible to the other three friends.

"Man, I've never gotten one of those," Pence said, sitting in the floor with his back against the couch.

"Like you need one, Tubby," Hayner cracked. There was a ring of 'ohhhhs' around the small circle of friends. Pence could even admit that he kind of walked into it.

"Apply cold water to burned area," Olette giggled.

They talked and laughed and joked and listened to music and play fought and pulled pranks and did all the normal shit that kids their age did, and Roxas loved it at first, he really did. It was unfortunate that he got so tired and bored as fast as he did. It probably took about a year for him to slip into a state of boredom that felt a lot like he would imagine cryostasis to feel like.

"We should hit the beach this summer," Hayner suggested as the sun was setting, and they all began to gather their things to head back home. It would be dinner time for all of them soon.

"Yeah, we should," Pence responded, checking his phone for calls from mom. "I'm sure my brother can take us before school starts back."

"_Lame_. Your brother is a buzz kill from hell." Hayner accentuated his statement with a well-placed toss of a popsicle stick at Pence's head.

"Then what's your bright idea?"

"I dunno. Steal a car. Rob a bank. Get older friends."

Roxas considered that option for a moment. It was an idea that he felt had endless opportunities attached to it, and since he had gotten some real friends, he figured it was a very _doable_ option.

He would look into it.

* * *

"So about that game..." Axel trailed off and lit another cigarette. They had decided to turn the music down for background noise after several songs.

"What game?" Roxas asked. He was feeling a little sleepy now. Not to mention forgetful. They were playing a game...?

"That game of Never Have I Ever that we started? Your brain didn't turn into a fried egg that fast, did it?"

"Oh..." Roxas remembered, though he didn't think he had the kind of attention span at the moment to keep focused on the number of fingers they had up or down. "Wanna play truth or dare, instead?"

"I like the way you think, sport," Axel's eyes sparkled at the idea.

"I refuse to do anything fucked up, so don't even think about asking."

"I can be very persuasive."

"I'm sure you can, but not with this guy."

"We'll see... And on that note, truth or dare?"

"Truth," Roxas said almost in a knee-jerk fashion. He rarely ever said 'dare' first.

"Alright... Tell me the truth. Is your life really _that_ boring?"

The air in the Jeep became suddenly very heavy and thick as they both held in bated breaths. Roxas swallowed a lump in his throat.

He looked out of the window and saw a vaguely familiar corner store with an old Coca-Cola sign and a highlighter green poster board advertising "country cooking" inside.

Axel made a noise in his throat as if to say, "I'm waiting". Roxas looked back to the man and immediately had the thought that there was no purpose in telling him at all; those eyes that Roxas tentatively searched now made it seem as if he already knew, as if he had _been_ Roxas in a past life and was coming back to tell him that he was a fucking idiot who didn't know anything about anything.

"Why do you think?" Roxas offered. He sneered in annoyance; he didn't feel quite as high anymore after that question.

"Listen, it had to either be obscenely boring or abusive, and I don't see any signs of mental trauma hidden in those baby blues. You ran because you couldn't take one more day in that stagnant shit hole."

Roxas pressed his lips together tightly and looked down at his lap.

"You don't have to tell me everything. Chances are, it's a long fucking story." His voice softened and his words were full of empathy that Roxas didn't trust. He didn't like the fact that Axel was asking oddly specific questions and basically answering them correctly on his own. It didn't sit well on his gut at all.

"Yeah, it is." Roxas looked up from his lap to stare straight ahead. He heard Axel take another drag off of his cigarette.

Surprisingly, Axel had no response. Roxas could almost feel him thinking about what he could say that wouldn't sound patronizing or shallow, and to be honest, Roxas couldn't think of a response himself that he wouldn't be offended by.

"Truth or dare?" Roxas asked, taking the responsibility off of Axel's shoulders.

"Truth," he responded.

"Is that your natural hair color?"

Axel barked a laugh.

"Is that seriously your question?"

"Yeah."

He sighed and said, "Well, to answer your oh so deep and prying question... sort of."

"Sort of?"

"Yeah, it's naturally red, but not exactly this shade, per se. I color it a little."

"How _metro_," Roxas laughed.

"Hey, I highly doubt your hair is all _swooshy_ and cute like that because of a few cowlicks."

"It's not _cute_."

"It is."

"It is _not_."

"I bet girls ask to touch it all the time because it's so _cute_."

Roxas let out a slightly mortified and anguished groan.

"Truth or dare?" Axel asked, throwing yet another cigarette out of the window.

Roxas stared him down with a dark look before answering, "Truth."

"Gay, straight, bi, trans, asexual, pansexual, none of the above...?"

"Well..." There was a long pause. A long pause that was interrupted by Axel whistling the Jeopardy theme song.

"Don't fucking start."

"Then answer my question."

"I don't... really know...?"

"Hmm." Axel's eyes narrowed.

"What?"

"I... now don't take this the wrong way, but I kind of already got a not-so-sure vibe from you."

"Yeah? And what about you?"

"You know... I'm not really sure yet either."

"That surprises me, a _lot_."

"Why's that?"

"Because you seem extremely sure of everything."

"That's because you don't know me, sport."

Roxas inserted two fingers into his mouth, completely subconsciously, wondering if this car ride was going to get any more or less melodramatic and invasive. He just wasn't sure whether he liked Axel or not, whether he could trust him as far as he could throw him or farther. What was he trying to pull, anyway? Was he trying to act as if he truly was some kind of savior for Roxas, illuminating some metaphorical path before him, the end of the road being some sort of paradise revolving around everything his parents ever told him not to do?

Was that really something to worry about, or embrace?

His mind was in turmoil; gut feeling and inherent desire were currently battling learned behaviors and his parents concept of morality. On one hand, he was extremely tempted to throw all caution to the wind and dive head-first into an entirely different world, to throw himself to the wolves, to see what would happen. After all, hadn't he already started that chain of events by hitchhiking down the highway to begin with? On the other hand... morality wasn't a concept that he could so easily rip apart, and at this point, he still wasn't sure whether he wanted to rip it apart at all.

"Truth or dare?" Roxas asked quietly.

"Dare. And stop fucking chewing your goddamn fingers."

"I dare you to pull over and moon the next car that drives by. And they're my fingers, I can do whatever the hell I want with them."

"Ugh, it makes me nervous," Axel said with a scowl, slowing down and pulling off into the dirt and dead grass.

Axel's face alone as he dropped trou' and pressed his pale ass against his window as a wholesome and horrified family of four drove by was enough to send Roxas into another fit of giggles; after all, he was still under the influence of weed. No amount of mental unrest would change that just yet.

"You look like you do this every fucking day. Like, oh no biggie, I'm just gonna expose myself to non-consenting public. I do it all the time."

"Maybe I do, you don't know me," Axel said with an eyebrow waggle, re-zipping and buttoning his pants.

"I should get out now before I have to tuck and roll."

"Before you do that, truth or dare?"

"Dare." He could say dare now that Axel had said it. He never said it first. He always felt too _eager_ somehow when he said it first.

"I want you to dodge the next train that comes by."

A silent huff of nervous laughter ghosted past Roxas' lips, barely heard over the idling of Axel's unmoving Jeep, and the corner of his mouth twitched, wanting to smile in the hopes that this asshole was fucking joking.

"No way man, why would you ask that?"

"The railroad tracks run parallel to this road, right past those trees on our right. I'm gonna roll down the windows, we're gonna drink these Colt 45's before they get too warm, we're gonna listen for the next train, and you're gonna dodge it when it rolls by." Something in Axel's eyes was dark in the way that set off every alarm, red flag, warning bell, and siren that existed in Roxas' head. "Or, you know, you could get to hitching a different ride... your choice."

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Roxas asked, jolted and panicked. None of his friends back home would have ever dared him to do something that stupid.

"Deal?"

Roxas shook his head and flung open the car door, slinging one leg out as if he were going to leave, and stalled. He ran his tongue across the backs of his slick front teeth and debated. He didn't know how many more drivers would be willing to pick him up and take him as far as Axel was willing to take him, and it was still awfully cold...

He situated himself back into the passenger seat, but left the door open. A giant glass bottle was suddenly dropped into is lap, narrowly missing his valuables, and he flinched and snapped his gaze back to that stupid, crazy redhead that he was beginning to dislike.

"You really have no off button, do you?" Roxas asked.

"If I can honestly say one thing about myself, it's that I believe deeply in the concept of going hard or going the fuck home. You can do with that what you will."

Axel pried the cap off his beer and drank deeply, the smell of it greeting Roxas' nose nearly instantly. Roxas had always liked beer when he had it. He slowly, timidly, took the bottle opener from Axel's outstretched hand and opened his own beer, licking the cool glass with just the tip of his pink tongue and tasting a hint of yeast and hops. The beverage was crisp on it's way down his throat, and he was able to focus on the repetitive act of tipping the glass bottle back, feeling the carbonated liquid run down his esophagus and bubble in the depths of his stomach where it would wait to be filtered and then expelled. He waited for Axel to say something else completely outrageous, because what _else_ was this psycho going to say, but no words came. He simply looked down at the bottle on his knee, the sand that had filled the cracks and crevices of the floorboard, the pale, dead grass on the ground beneath him.

Axel lit another cigarette.

"Want one?" He asked.

Roxas nodded his head and gave the soft pack a sideways glance.

"There's only one left," he stated.

"I know. I bought another pack at the gas station. I won't hold you to it."

A train horn sounded in the distance. Axel sat up straight, eyes wild and wide, and reached for the handle of his door.

Roxas' eyelids drooped before he responded, "Honestly... I'm banking on that."

"Consider this train dodge payment for everything I ever do for you. You'll thank me later."

There was something significant about that statement that caused the strangest sensation to creep up Roxas' spine.

He said nothing as he finally planted his feet on the ground. He gripped his beer tightly, not willing to have his hands empty, to not have anything to clutch desperately to. Each step felt stupid, like a deliberate attempt at purposeless suicide, and Roxas berated himself for every plodding step that carried him closer to those train tracks.

"Hurry up, you'll miss it, the next train won't come through for hours, probably!" Axel ran up beside him with those distinctive lanky strides, and threw an arm over his shoulders. "I'll do it with you if it'll make you feel better."

Well, at least he wouldn't die alone. He nodded his head in affirmation, staring blankly ahead through the trees at the dark, rusted iron rails that were beginning to look more and more like some medieval death machine the closer he got to them.

They were both standing on the tracks sooner than Roxas wanted them to be, and he could feel the rails rumble beneath his feet much more violently than he would have liked.

"Here it comes," Axel mumbled. Roxas risked a glance at the seemingly deranged man to his left and swallowed thick. "Jump when it's about six feet away."

Dry air left his throat as he nodded once again. His eyes were forced open so wide, he felt like he would never blink again.

Massive amounts of metal and power and machinery rounded the bend in the tracks, and Roxas barely had time to think before it seemed to be nearly on top of him. The sound was louder than anything that had graced his ears, and the sheer mass of the object rumbling towards him made his knees weak and his mouth dry.

He could admit that he screamed like a girl as Axel shoved him off of the tracks before jumping off himself on the opposite side.

Roxas laid there, spread eagle in the itchy brown grass, chest heaving and eyes still peeled, watching each train car as it passed him by, each wheel, each warning label, each piece of graffiti. When the last car rolled by and the wall of metal was replaced with pine trees, Roxas saw a bright head of hair pop up from the other side of the tracks.

Axel whooped and howled and jumped with more energy than Roxas could fathom. The next thing he knew, the man had leaped over the tracks and jerked him up from his safe place on the ground, ruffling his blond hair and shouting meaningless curses at the sky. The look on his face was wildly happy; his teeth were flashing in a bright grin, his eyes were wide and feral, his laughter was simply _manic_, and everything combined made Roxas' heart beat that much faster. If he hadn't known any better, he could have sworn that he was on the brink of cardiac arrest.

"You're... you're fucking crazy," Roxas croaked. He was sure he hadn't blinked yet, and if it weren't for his arm around Axel, he probably would have fallen to his knees.

"Are you kidding me? That was exhilarating!"

"I need to sit down."

"Oh brother," Axel said, prying Roxas hand from his shirt and letting him nearly crumple to the ground. Axel dropped to the ground and found himself on his back next to the traumatized boy.

The sun was beginning to set beyond the tree line, and the cloudy, grey day was giving way to one of the only moments of color during this season. The sky turned purple and orange and pink and red and the two newly made friends looked up at the sky, their breath visible on each exhale.

"Aren't you cold?" Roxas asked, looking down at Axel's tank top.

"Nah. I don't mind it."

"I meant what I said. You're fucking crazy."

"What does that make you?"

Roxas paused. "Stupid," he settled with saying.

Axel laughed softly and looked from the boy to the sky and back again. Green eyes closed and he inhaled deep through his nostrils. He was ready to smell ocean instead of pine.


End file.
